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Requiem for Used Ignition Cap by J. Scott Brownlee, which was selected as the winner of the 2015 Orison Poetry Prize by C. Dale Young, explores the rural landscape and residents of Brownlee's native Llano, Texas. Brownlee might be a considered a natural mystic, finding in the particulars of place the vehicles of transcendence.
Set in the drought-plagued landscape of Central Texas, Ascension is a collection of lyric poems that chronicles life in and around Llano, Texas (population 3,033). Brownlee's poems meditate on the inescapability of place. Organ Solo with Oblivion and Gar Skittish fish lay eggs in this shallow stone cleft of an algae chorus. Turn my soul into song, if you can, River Lord. Treat believing the same as each minnow slipping coin-like into deep murk. Your spirit mimics me unblinking, fishbone face framing brackish absence, saying, Kneel into this. Lean low, sinner, & drink. Bitter infidel, swallow the black granite whole if you are not afraid of what comes after it: ___________. Live forever.
Sport has always been central to the movements of both the nation-state and the people who resist that nation-state. Think of the Roman Colosseum, Jesse Owens’s four gold-medal victories in the 1936 Nazi Olympics, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s protest at the 1968 Olympics, and the fallout Colin Kaepernick suffered as a result of his recent protest on the sidelines of an NFL game. Sport is a place where the body and the mind are the most dangerous because they are allowed to be unified as one energy. Bodies Built for Game brings together poems, essays, and stories that challenge our traditional ideas of sport and question the power structures that athletics enforce. What is it that drives us to athletics? What is it that makes us break our own bodies or the bodies of others as we root for these unnatural and performed victories? Featuring contributions from a diverse group of writers, including Hanif Abdurraqib, Fatimah Asghar, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Louise Erdrich, Toni Jensen, Ada Limón, Tommy Orange, Claudia Rankine, Danez Smith, and Maya Washington, this book challenges America by questioning its games.
"The violence of men, the delicacy of their broken bodies, the religiosity of the town that raised them: all of these influence Highway or Belief, which documents an America we rarely see. In J. Scott Brownlee’s Llano, Aron Anderson is the king of baseball and meth. High school football heroes become PTSD-affected war vets. The rural dead sing from the hollow flutes their bones leave in the dust. These are poems whose language begins with the body and the land. For Brownlee, the two are inseparable.” -Dorianne Laux, author of The Book of Men
Stevie Edwards' Sadness Workshop, a winner of the 2016 Button Poetry Prize, explores love, lust, womanhood, and vulnerability. Each poem is daring and honest, shattering cultural expectations and stereotypes. Edwards' refreshing and bold stance will appeal to readers everywhere.
Phil SaintDenisSanchez’s debut collection before & after our bodies tackles complex familial history and struggles, emerging in the rich backdrop of New Orleans, Louisiana. Through multilayered language and immersive imagery, SaintDenisSanchez interweaves political and social issues–from the lasting impacts of colonialism to environmental disaster–with intensely personal narratives of love, learning, and loss. The long, lyrical form and enrapturing poetic voice draw you in and refuse to let you go. before & after our bodies maps a stunningly poignant family tree and gets at the root of the social forces that shaped its growth.
Sport has always been central to the movements of both the nation-state and the people who resist that nation-state. Think of the Roman Colosseum, Jesse Owens’s four gold-medal victories in the 1936 Nazi Olympics, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s protest at the 1968 Olympics, and the fallout Colin Kaepernick suffered as a result of his recent protest on the sidelines of an NFL game. Sport is a place where the body and the mind are the most dangerous because they are allowed to be unified as one energy. Bodies Built for Game brings together poems, essays, and stories that challenge our traditional ideas of sport and question the power structures that athletics enforce. What is it that drives us to athletics? What is it that makes us break our own bodies or the bodies of others as we root for these unnatural and performed victories? Featuring contributions from a diverse group of writers, including Hanif Abdurraqib, Fatimah Asghar, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Louise Erdrich, Toni Jensen, Ada Limón, Tommy Orange, Claudia Rankine, Danez Smith, and Maya Washington, this book challenges America by questioning its games.
2014 Button Poetry Prize Winner "These harrowing poems make montage, make mirrors, make elegiac biopic, make 'a dope ass trailer with a hundred black children / smiling into the camera & the last shot is the wide mouth of a pistol.' That's no spoiler alert, but rather, Smith's way–saying & laying it beautifully bare. A way of desensitizing the reader from his own defenses each time this long, black movie repeats."–Marcus Wicker "Danez Smith's BLACK MOVIE is a cinematic tour-de-force that lets poetry vie with film for the honor of which medium can most effectively articulate the experience of Black America."–Rain Taxi
A Fire to Light Our Tongues: Texas Writers on Spirituality brings together the works of writers in Texas. The title is taken, with permission, from Naomi Shihab Nye’s introduction to Salting the Ocean: 100 Poems by Young Poets, where she states the role of poetry serves as “a fire to light our tongues.” This view describes the role that creative writers, encountering the challenges of this past decade, face as they grapple with shifting views of spirituality. While the project started before COVID-19, given the current worldwide pandemic, a book of creative work responding to writers’ spirituality could not be more timely. This anthology offers readers creative works by Texas writers as they wrestle with evolving systems of belief or nonbelief.